It is a principle of all free governments that the people rule. Each member of the community, in theory at least, is supposed to give assent to Constitution and laws to which he is subject; or, at least, it is assumed that these were made by a majority of the people. And this assent is given according to forms previously prescribed. The people vote directly upon the adoption of the Constitution, and by their representatives in making the laws. And since all the people must be subject to the Constitution and laws, so all the people should be consulted in their formation; that is, all who are of sufficient age and discretion to express an intelligent opinion. No one who claims to be a republican or lover of freedom at heart can dispute these positions. They are in substance the principles promulgated in the Declaration of Independence, and they form the common basis upon which our national and state governments rest. When they shall cease to be recognized and respected by the people and by our lawmakers, then free institutions will cease to exist. But I presume their correctness, when applied to man, will be doubted by none; for man is willing enough to claim for himself the full recognition of all the high prerogatives I have shown him to be entitled to. But I hold more than this to be true. I hold that these rights belong, not to man alone, but to the race, and to each individual member of it, without regard to sex. I hold that woman has as good and rightful a claim to them as her brother, and that the man who denies this claim is not only no good democrat, and much less a good republican, but that in being guilty of this denial he commits an act of the grossest injustice and oppression. And I insist, not only that woman is entitled to the enjoyment of all these rights which God and nature have bestowed upon the race, but that she is entitled to the same means of enforcing those rights as man; and that therefore she should be heard in the formation of Constitutions, in the making of the laws, and in the selection of those by whom the laws are administered. In this country there is one great tribunal by which all theories must be tried, all principles tested, all measures settled: and that tribunal is the ballot-box. It is the medium through which public opinion finally makes itself heard. Deny to any class in the community the right to be heard at the ballot-box and that class sinks at once into a state of slavish dependence, of civil insignificance, which nothing can save from becoming subjugation, oppression and wrong.